


The Idiot's Guide of How NOT to be a Necromancer

by starbunny



Series: The Idiot's Guide to Necromancy [1]
Category: Captain America - All Media Types, Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern with Magic, Crack, Fluff, Ghosts, Happy Ending, Humor, Hurt/Comfort, Hydra (Marvel), M/M, Magic, Magical Realism, Meet-Cute, Modern Bucky Barnes, Necromancy, Non-Serum Steve Rogers/Winter Soldier Bucky Barnes | Shrinkyclinks, Pining, Pre-Serum Steve Rogers, Purely family friendly fluff, SHIELD Agent Bucky Barnes, Spirits, Urban Fantasy, Zero horror
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-06
Updated: 2019-02-06
Packaged: 2019-10-23 09:24:31
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 13,763
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17680781
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/starbunny/pseuds/starbunny
Summary: It was supposed to be simple. Get rid of the hydra and stay the hell away from the necromancer’s mansion.But as life goes, things never go according to plan, and Bucky ends up coming face to face with one of the most dangerous and feared beings in the world - a powerful necromancer who is nothing he had ever expected. Ever.





	1. This had Better be in His Eulogy

If you asked twelve-year-old James Buchanan Barnes what he wanted to do when he grew up, fighting an actual hydra as a defender of the world against supernatural threats wouldn’t have ranked anywhere on his top three list. In fact, it wouldn’t have ranked anywhere on the list at all.

But thirteen years later and here he was, panting and drenched in blood, standing knee-deep in a lake with a fucking dagger in hand, facing down one of the most terrifying monsters to ever exist in the world.

A hydra.

Cut off one head and another would take its place - everyone who worked at SHIELD knew that saying by heart, but _eighteen_ actual heads? That was definitely pushing it. The most Bucky had seen (and fought) was a whopping ten-headed hydra, and he’d nearly died at least a hundred times over before he finally managed to take it down.

And now there was him, one singular lone person carrying a fucking useless dagger against an eighteen-headed beast – towering over him with only two heads remaining at this point, snarling and snapping at him with razor sharp teeth.

Yeah, this was totally where he envisioned his life would be when he was twelve.

\----------

In reality, when James Buchanan Barnes first turned twelve, he wasn’t envisioning his life as anything at all. All he really cared for at that time was getting to eat a bowl of chocolate flakes every morning and getting to drink a glass of chocolate milk before he slept every night. Nothing more.

Then one of those mandatory health screenings came along and spoilt all that.

He had been sitting on a chair, asked to read a bunch of small letters and numbers on a chart pasted far away as part of the normal eye check-up, nothing massively unusual about that at all.

Until he read the bottommost line out – a string of letters in red, not black like the other lines. The doctor in-charge had been taken aback, and he asked little Bucky to read the line again, which he did.

Fast forward to that evening, a bunch of strange men dressed in black came knocking at the Barnes household, waving their government cards about and asking to speak to little Bucky and his parents.

It was then that they told him that he possessed _The Sight_ , the rare and coveted ability to see magic in the world, and they offered him a full scholarship to a school he’d never even heard of, to learn how to harness his ability, use it for good, and that had been it.

He learnt that all those legends and myths – dragons, fairies, magic, even unicorns – they really did exist in the world, in a plane of existence separate from the normal world, all very real and sometimes, very dangerous.

And that was how he ended up in SHIELD many years later - the supernatural equivalent of the Department of Defence - working as one of their top operatives, tasked to take down supernatural threats that plagued the world, the days of eating chocolate flakes in the morning and drinking chocolate milk at night long over.

But even that still wasn’t enough to explain why he was currently fighting a fucking eighteen-headed hydra all by himself.

To really understand that, you would have to go back approximately fifteen hours back in time.

\----------

Fifteen hours ago, Bucky was still in his apartment in New York, far from any lakes and definitely far from any eighteen-headed hydras.

He’d gotten a call from SHIELD with regards to his next mission, so off he went, on board a plane with Agent Maria Hill on the line, giving the mission briefing.

“Our analysts have detected a new magic signature in sector five two hours ago, at one of the lakes inside the forest. Still pretty low in energy levels, but it’s gradually rising, so we’re sending you in to take care of it before it becomes a problem.”

Right, sounded pretty straightforward and simple.

“What’s the target?”

“We just managed to ID the creature, and good news Barnes – it’s your favourite.”

“A fucking hydra? You’ve gotta be kidding me!”

“Relax. Latest intel reports that it’s still a hatchling, just two-headed for now. Shouldn’t a problem for you, yes?”

Bucky let out an exasperated growl.

In his entire SHIELD career, he’d fought many things. Vampires, dragons, rogue magicians, even a necromancer, but hydras - god, those slippery bastards really took the cake. They were absolutely everything Bucky hated in a monster. Vicious, noisy, ridiculously _screechy_ , and overall just a huge pain in the ass to deal with.

But this was what he signed up for years ago when SHIELD offered him a position, and he still had to do his job or innocent people would pay the price. 

“Fine. Get rid of the hydra. Is that all?”

“Yeah, pretty much it. Except…” And Hill trailed off.

“What is it?”

“The lake is awfully close to this uh…mansion. We first detected it about a year ago, with energy signatures that are off the charts.”

“A mansion?”

“Well we don’t actually know for certain that it’s a mansion, efforts to photograph and investigate the place have been met with…unforeseen difficulties so-”

“Just get to the point already. What are we potentially talking about here? Witch coven? Vampire lord? Demon cult-”

“Worse actually. It’s uh…a _necromancer_.”

The _fuck?_

Necromancy wasn’t a word anyone should just throw around casually, especially not in SHIELD, usually going hand-in-hand with things like murder, undead armies, war, genocide - basically all things relating to death.

In fact, the last time a necromancer decided to act up with all his kingly ambitions of world domination, it turned into a massive international war lasting a whole year before the necromancer was finally taken down, reign finally brought to an end.

Bucky had been one of the soldiers fighting in that war five years ago, and he had to say, there was definitely nothing worse than being forced to fight his own friends, freshly revived from the dead, eyes cold and not going down no matter how many bullets he shot into them. It took a million therapy sessions before he was able to go back to fighting for SHIELD, and even up till today, he still woke up gasping some nights, faces of his dead friends fresh in his mind.

“How bad is it?”

“Well…we have yet to ID the necromancer involved, but if you must know, they are currently on the Alpha watch-list.”

So basically one of the most dangerous beings currently threatening the world, and Bucky was headed there right now, right smack into their domain. Yeah, he was definitely giving this mission second thoughts now.

“Look, I know how bad it sounds-”

“ _Bad_ doesn’t even come close to describing this whole situation right now!”

“Trust me, I like this no better than you,” Hill sighed. “But it’s a hydra. Nobody is better at killing those things than you, and you know what happens when we leave it alone for too long.”

“Yes I’m well aware, I was fucking there when that ten-headed hydra popped up in Mexico,” Bucky growled. “But we’re talking about a _necromancer_ here, Hill. On the _Alpha watch-list_. The last time this happened, that was-”

“-The Pierce incident. I get it. But nobody else is available to take up this mission Barnes, you know that. And we need that hydra gone.”

Bucky let out a long sigh.

She’s right of course. God dammit. He really hated his job. 

“Don’t think too much about it, okay? Romanoff was sent into the area two weeks ago to deal with an escaped chimera and she came out unscathed, so just stay away from the mansion, don’t go anywhere near it, don’t even _breathe_ near it and you should be fine too.”

“Yeah. Great. Fantastic advice. I’ll do just that,” Bucky grumbled. “But just so you know, If I come back as an undead, I’m coming straight for you.”

“I’ll be waiting,” Hill said. “And good luck Barnes, I’ll see you soon.” 

The call ended with a click, and Bucky let out a whole string of profanities into the air before finally going to gear up.

Just treat it like any other mission, Bucky told himself. Taking care of a two-headed hydra. Nothing he hadn’t done a million times before.

Hell, it might even be a little fun.

Except that nobody fucking told him the so-called two-headed, little baby hydra was actually a colossal fully-grown eighteen-headed monster instead.

\----------

So that finally brought him back to the now, the giant monster looming over him nearly as big as a house with its final two heads, surrounded by sixteen of its other dead heads – either decapitated, stabbed through the skull or mangled and charred black from multiple good old-fashioned explosives.

Bucky’s only means of communication with SHIELD had been turned into hydra chow ten minutes ago, as did his favourite sniper gun and his five other back-up guns – all fully equipped with explosive magic rounds which were the few things that could really penetrate the hydra’s thick scaly hide and block its regenerative ability.

Which explained why he was left with a pathetic dagger, magic-enhanced but a fucking _dagger_ nonetheless, barely even a toothpick to this massive beast.

His left arm was already rendered completely useless at his side, broken in multiple places with blood pouring out from deep bite wounds, reaching all the way down to bone, and that was just his left arm. He hadn’t even gone to assess other parts of his body yet, or whether they were even still attached to him or not.

One head let out an ear-piercing screech, diving straight for him with jaws stretched wide. Bucky made a full lunge to the right to dodge those snapping teeth, then stabbed the hydra head deep through the skull, feeling the unforgiving grind of pure bone through the handle, the inevitable crunch, then at last, he reached the squishy brain. The hydra head let out an enraged squeal before dropping into the water, freshly dispatched.

Seventeenth head down. Just one final head to go.

Bucky let out a ragged pant, but before he could stumble back up, the final head came sweeping in from the side, hitting the lake with a thunderous boom and knocking him sideways like a ragdoll, flung out of the water and crashing deep into the trees.

There was barely any pain, just immense pressure, no thanks to the ridiculous cocktail of magic mind-numbing drugs Dr Banner had concocted for them to use in these exact situations. Bucky had already burned through three full doses, which was still way more than the recommended dosage of zero, because Banner’s drugs were no joke, basically rotting all the organs away to nothingness – that is, if the nightmarish withdrawal didn’t get to you first - and they were approved for usage only as a last resort, in life-or-death situations.

Well, this definitely counted as one of them.

Bucky propped himself up by his right arm and forced himself to stand back upright on his feet, using the tree beside as support.

God, of all things to die from, it had to be a fucking hydra. He’d almost rather be eaten alive and digested slowly for a hundred years by one of those sentient carnivorous plants living up in the mountains.

The last head came lunging for him with another screech. Bucky grit his teeth as it swooped in, then used every last bit of strength remaining to dodge to the left and stab it straight in the eye, driving the toothpick dagger as far in as it could go to reach the soft gooey brain.

The monster let out a sharp squeal and Bucky twisted the dagger even more, hoping as hell it hurt like a fucking son of a bitch.

The hydra retracted its head with the dagger still stuck inside, writhing and screaming in agony before finally crashing back to the water, twitching for a few seconds, then falling completely motionless.

Dead at last.

Bucky couldn’t help but choke out a laugh, blood spilling out over his lips.

Take that, fucking eighteen-headed hydra! Eight more heads than his record of ten.

God, SHIELD would be so proud. Maybe they’ll even put it in his eulogy once he’s gone. In fact, they had _better_.

Agent James Buchanan Barnes, killer of hydras. He once took down an eighteen-headed hydra all by himself, armed with a single fucking dagger. We will never forget him.

Nat and Hill would be at his funeral in their usual black garbs, sobbing their eyes out (as unlikely as that would be), and Fury would stay expressionless throughout, then shed a single dramatic tear during the speech before going back to frame up his record in SHIELD headquarters for all to see.

Bucky laughed again at the thought, more blood spurting out from his mouth.

Fuck, it’s such a damn shame he wouldn’t be around to see any of it.

He had no regrets though, because taking down an eighteen-headed hydra? That was the stuff of legends. The kind of thing a baby SHIELD agent fresh out from school could only dream of accomplishing. 

Although –

And Bucky limped a step deeper into the forest and away from the lake, legs all jelly-like and barely able to support his weight now.

-If he could have just one last dying wish…It would be to succumb to his wounds surrounded by trees, not surrounded by fucking fish food by the lake. 

So Bucky found the strength in him to take another step, and another, another, deeper into the forest.

Until his legs finally gave way and he collapsed to the ground, completely spent.

This was it then, Bucky thought, blinking wearily. Surrounded by green leafy trees and a beautiful giant white mansion in the background. Not such a bad place to go at all.

Bucky found his eyes slipping shut, all the things he had left to do in the world flashing through his mind in a single rush.

His promise to Nat to visit Russia together one day. Calling his mother who he hadn’t spoken to in a week. And his sister. His multiple sisters. One of which he would never get to see graduate. Ever.  

Turns out he did have some regrets after all.

What a fucking joke.

Then everything went dark.


	2. This is Not The Afterlife

The afterlife was everything as advertised. Warm, comfy and bright, but there were a few odd things that stuck out as unusual.

Like the peachy colour of the ceiling (shouldn’t everything be pure white?) or the whole new world of pain Bucky found himself in, struggling to take a breath without feeling as if he was going to pass out.

He blinked twice before opening his eyes and yeah-

 _This wasn’t the afterlife at all_. He was well and fully still in the world of the living.

Where the hell was he?

He blinked a few more times and tried to get up, fully unprepared for the excruciating blast of pain that came, making him choke on his own breath and collapse back onto the bed, whimpering softly.

He looked around again, tilting his head to the left, then to the right.

A simple, sort of vintage-looking room, all four walls and the ceiling painted in this pleasant peachy tone that reminded Bucky of autumn. It was sparsely furnished, with just a bed, a table and a chair, all made of the same polished wood, in a deep caramel-like colour. The curtains were drawn at his left, fluttering slightly in the wind, and there was a door at his right, closed shut.

This wasn’t SHIELD. Where was he?

Then the door gave a loud creak, and Bucky jerked to the side, immediately regretting that and wincing hard at the fresh wave of pain.

“Oh hey you’re awake!” a voice said. Male, slightly deep.

Bucky looked up.

A young man was staring back down at him, tiny, almost paper-thin, with crystal blue eyes and fluffy blond hair, dressed in a simple navy shirt and pants.

“Where am I?” Bucky croaked out.

The man cocked his head to the side, smiling a little, suddenly looking strangely like a bright ball of solid sunshine, captured from the sun itself. Maybe Bucky was in the afterlife after all. How else could he explain this tiny angel standing in front of him?

“What’s the last thing you remember?”

Bucky thought about it.

He remembered being briefed by Hill, being sent on board a plane, then there was the hydra, getting beaten broken and bloody, and then-

Bucky went cold.

The mansion. The giant white mansion. The very same mansion that Hill specifically warned him about. Because-

“Oh god.” Bucky immediately forced himself upright, gritting his teeth at the sheer amount of pain that caused him. He needed to get the fuck out of here right now!

“Hey hey, calm down. You’re okay. You were really badly hurt but you’re safe here. I promise.” The man made soft soothing hand motions at him, trying to push him back down into the bed, but Bucky wasn’t having it.

He definitely wasn’t in the afterlife. This was straight up _hell_ , all the way down to the rock bottom. 

“Where am I? Who the fuck are you?!”

“I’m-”

Then there was a thunderous bang at the door, followed by a loud scream coming from outside. Bucky flinched hard, but the man didn’t even move, didn’t even turn around.

“What the fuck was that?!”

“Shhhh. Calm down. Please. Just relax. Everything’s going to be okay.”

“Wha-”

“Just calm down, you’re okay.” the man shushed him again. “My name is Steve. Steve Rogers. I just want to help you, alright? Can you tell me your name?”

Bucky wasn’t listening, eyes darting about. Oh god, what the fuck - who was that screaming? What did the necromancer do to them? What was going to happen to him? Fuck, he’d rather die a million times over than have his soul snatched away, ripped apart and forced to fight his friends. Fuck no, never again- 

“I need to get out of here,” he started mumbling, trying to kick off the blankets he was trapped in. “I need to- Need to get out. It’s not safe. No-”

“Hey hey hey, you’re safe here. I promise. Please calm down,” the man begged, kneeling down at the bed and staring up at him with eyes so round and bright.

“No, you don’t understand! I need to go now! I can’t-”

Bony-thin fingers grabbed onto his wrist, and Bucky immediately tried to shake them off with a grunt but they were stronger than expected, clinging on tight. Then a surge of warmth engulfed him from head to toe, turning his mind completely blank, suddenly filled with a total sense of calm.

“What did you do to me?” Bucky asked drowsily, his thoughts slowing to a near stop. So weirdly tranquil, like there was nothing wrong in the world at all. 

“I’m sorry,” the man – Steve – said, sounding genuinely apologetic. “You were just panicking so much. I didn’t want you to hurt yourself.” 

Steve pushed him gently back down into the bed, tucking him back in, and Bucky couldn’t do a damn thing to stop him. His mind was just at a complete standstill. Everything was so soft. Warm. Peaceful.

“Please just try to rest. You’re still very badly injured.”

Bucky tried to fight, to stay awake, but-

He fell straight back asleep. 

\-----------

“You have magic,” Bucky said the next time he was awake, mind now clear.

Steve shot him a small smile – once again blindingly radiant - but didn’t say anything to confirm or deny it.

“Are you a healer?” Bucky pressed on. He wasn’t an idiot, and those injuries he sustained from the hydra? That should have killed him thrice over. And not to forget that he was healing way faster than expected, the bones in his left arm still sore but all set in place, back in one piece.

“Kind of.” Steve shrugged, then raised a small bowl in his direction. “Do you want some soup? It’s corn.”

“No thanks,” Bucky said curtly. He had no idea what was inside. For all he knew, it could be poisoned.

“It’s just soup, I promise.”

Bucky shook his head again, and he was totally unprepared for the way Steve basically wilted, looking just like a kicked puppy, shoulders hunched together with eyes drooping down sadly. God, what the fuck. How did he even _exist?_

“You can’t get better if you don’t eat anything,” Steve said with a little pout, but Bucky just narrowed his eyes.

He hadn’t forgotten where he was or what he was dealing with - _necromancer_ , his traitorous mind supplied, and a cold chill ran down his spine. There was no goddamn way he was accepting strange foods from even stranger people, even if said person was a literal ball of sunshine packaged into a tiny, fragile human that looked like he could be blown away by a gust of wind.

“Why are you helping me? What do you want from me?” 

Steve’s eyes went wide, blinking a few times.

“Uhm, nothing. You were just hurt, and I wanted to help,” he said slowly. “I found you bleeding and half-dead outside. What-”

“You can drop the act now. I know who this house belongs to,” Bucky snapped. “Am I a prisoner here?”

“What?!” Steve squeaked out. " _No!_ Why would you think that? I swear I just wanted to help. That’s all!”

There was genuine horror in Steve’s eyes, and Bucky found himself exhaling a breath. 

“You were dying and I couldn’t possibly just _leave_ you there! What sort of monster would I be if I did th-”

“I believe you,” Bucky said and that was the truth. And more honestly? He didn’t think Steve was even capable of lying in the first place.

So Bucky jumped to the next most logical conclusion.

“Are _you_ a prisoner then?”

Steve gawked at him.

“No! Again, why would you think that?!”

“So you’re not a prisoner?”

“No!”

“Not being held against your will?”

“ _No!_ I live here!! Jeez, are you sure you’re okay? Did you hit your head or something?”

Bucky blinked.

“You…live here?”

“Yes I live here!” 

“By yourself?”

“Yes by myself!” Steve exclaimed, like Bucky had finally gotten it.

“But that would mean-” And Bucky blinked once, twice, still unable to process what that meant.

Then it was his turn to gawk at Steve.

_“You’re the necromancer?!”_

Steve stiffened like a doe caught in headlights, twiddling his fingers.

“Uh…” Then he looked up, cheeks flushed in a bright shade of pink. “Yes..?”

_What the fuck._

\----------

Steve insisted Bucky to eat the bowl of corn soup, even taking a huge spoonful for himself to prove it wasn’t poisoned, and after minutes of non-stop pestering and more puppy dog looks, Bucky finally gave in – if only to make Steve stop making those goddamn eyes at him.

It turned out to be pretty damn delicious. Creamy, not too salty, filled with generous amounts of corn, potatoes and juicy bacon.

When he was halfway done, Steve asked,

“Can you tell me your name?”

Bucky considered lying, but figured there was no point in doing so.

“James Buchanan Barnes. But call me Bucky.”

“Okay Bucky. It’s nice to meet you!” Steve beamed, and it was like staring straight into the sun itself, bright and warm.

Seriously, how the fuck is this little shining pipsqueak the Alpha watch-list necromancer? He’s got to be like a million times too _smiley_ to be one of the world’s most feared and powerful necromancers to date. 

“So anyway,” Steve started, sounding ridiculously cheery as always (which Bucky soon realised was his default mood). “What were you doing out in the forest by yourself anyway? I don’t find people coming here often, let alone bleeding and half-dead.”

“I was…” And Bucky paused. How much should he say? What could he even say anyway? Then he finally settled for: “on a mission.”

“A mission?”

“It’s classified.”

“Oh.” Steve nodded, accepting it far too easily. “So you’re like some kind of soldier or something?”

“Uh…Yeah. Pretty much.”

“That’s incredible.” Steve smiled. “I used to always dream of joining the army when I was a kid.”

“Yeah? Well, don’t. It’s not as fun as you’d think.”

Steve laughed, and it was like a breath of fresh air.

“I can’t anyway.” Steve shrugged. “Got asthma. Heart murmurs. Back problems. Colour blindness-”

Bucky’s brain shut down again right there, because seriously what the fuck? Even more reasons that most definitely explained how little tiny cheery Steve was an international threat and-

He groaned internally. God, the cognitive dissonance was just killing him.

“Are you really a necromancer?” Bucky questioned, and Steve blinked up at him.

“Uh…yeah. Why?”

“It’s just…Well frankly you don’t _look_ like one.”

Steve raised an eyebrow and cocked his head to the side in a most definitely not adorable fashion.

“Err…what is a necromancer supposed to look like then?”

“I don’t know. Big dark scary with armies of undead?”

Steve burst out laughing and again, what the fuck? Bucky was being completely serious there.

“Did you read that from a novel or something?”

“No,” Bucky said flatly. “It’s from personal experience.”

The smile vanished off Steve’s face, replaced by one of those puppy dog expressions, positively crestfallen.

“Oh. I’m really sorry. That was horrible of me.” 

“It’s fine. It’s just- You can see why I don’t exactly believe you right?”

“Yeah…” Steve nodded thoughtfully, then perked up again. “Oh! How about I prove it to you then?”

“If you’re planning to revive any corpses I’m gonna have to stop you right ther-”

“No no no. No corpses involved. I promise.” Steve beamed.

\----------

And that was how Bucky ended up meeting Lucky, supposedly a brown Labrador dog who was now a _ghost_ Labrador dog outlined in a white glow (made visible using Steve’s powers), bounding throughout the mansion with as much energy and cheerfulness as a normal dog would, except that this one was invisible and could walk through walls.

He was also introduced to other human spirits that Steve made visible in a similar white glow when he called their names. A butler named Jarvis who bowed in greeting to Bucky. A circus acrobat named Clint, peering in upside down through the ceiling with a wave. A strange man named Wade, bouncing about everywhere in the room. A soldier named Phil, glaring suspiciously at Bucky – who Steve sheepishly admitted was the one that made that loud banging noise and scream, only because he’d thought Steve was in danger.

And all that was apparently just the tip of the iceberg. There were hundreds of other spirits here in the mansion for god knows whatever reason, and Bucky was definitely starting to see why SHIELD had Steve put on the Alpha watch-list. The sheer amount of magic power spewing out from this place must be _massive_.

Needless to say, Bucky definitely had no trouble believing that Steve was the necromancer after that.

Then he finally asked the million dollar question.

“How the hell did all this start?”

Steve told him.

\----------

It first began when Steve was fifteen.

His mother had just passed away, his only family left, and Steve was just a complete wreck, sobbing and purely inconsolable.

That was when his powers first came to be, and when his mother reappeared by his side translucent and glowing in white, nothing tangible like in real life, Steve had been ecstatic.

“I didn’t know what I was doing at first,” Steve had explained sadly to Bucky. “I thought it was just a hallucination. But I didn’t care anyway. It was just nice to have her back.”

So she followed him wherever he went, right by his side where nobody else could see, and Steve would chat and talk to her in private, pretending she was alive and well again.

Until six months later, and Steve finally realised what was going on.

“You’re not really here, are you?” Steve said with tears in his eyes.

His mother shook his head, a soft sad smile on her face.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to keep you here.”

His mother didn’t say a word, but nodded, sounding like ‘I know’.

“I really miss you,” Steve said quietly, unable to keep a sob from breaking free. “I love you. So so much. I’m so sorry.”

His mother reached out to cup his face, the touch cold, just barely there. ‘I love you too, sweetheart’, she seemed to say, and Steve forced himself to smile, even as a cascade of tears poured down his face.

“Goodbye. Be at peace now.”

And she kissed his forehead gently like she’d always do before fading away into nothingness, leaving Steve to sob by himself in his apartment, alone once again, only this time it was for real.

\----------

“Spirits need an anchor to stay in the world. A building, an object, a person,” Steve told Bucky. “And _I_ was her anchor.” 

\----------

Steve gradually moved on from that incident, returning back to some semblance of a normal life. Going back to school, studying and drawing, and also:

Getting punched and knocked around by the school bullies. Sneering brutes, all of them.

It’s not as if Steve was wearing a giant sign on the front that said: ‘PUNCH ME’, but it definitely wasn’t helping things when he was constantly going around school standing up for any bit of injustice seen. Stealing somebody’s chocolate pudding, copying answers of somebody’s homework, teasing a poor kid with curly hair – Steve would be there to tell those bullies off.

Until one day he bit off much more than he could chew, landing him in an alleyway, getting brutally beaten up by a group of actual gangsters.

With a few ribs definitely out of place and in excruciating pain, Steve screamed out, lashing out with all the power buried deep inside that he never touched since the day he accidentally tethered his mother’s spirit to the earth.

All the gangsters fell to the floor instantly, not moving, and Steve was left shaking in the corner in near sobs, not at all realising at the time that his nose was broken no more, or that his entire body was like it was back to brand new, painless everywhere.

The only silver lining was that he didn’t kill the gangsters, just knocked them out, but poor young Steve – just sixteen at that time – had been utterly terrified of himself, of what he could do, and he immediately rushed back home, packed up his bags and left without even looking back.

\----------

“I thought maybe it was a fluke, you know? The thing with my mother. I didn’t actually know what my powers were or what they could do,” Steve said, looking even smaller than usual. “I never realised I could actually _hurt_ somebody with my powers. I never wanted to.”

\----------

That eventually found young sixteen-year-old Steve out in the wild - no home, no family, just him and his cursed powers.

He became a recluse, staying far away from people, scrounging up every dollar and cent from strange oddball jobs all around just to feed himself.

It was an utterly miserable way of life. Steve was lonely, scared and confused, but there was one thing he knew for certain: that he’d rather die than accidentally hurt somebody again.

But everything changed again one day, when Steve was visiting his mother’s grave.

He had just laid down a single white carnation on her gravestone – her favourite flower - when he noticed a flicker at the corner of his eye.

An elderly man, pale and translucent, outlined in white - Steve didn’t need to be a genius to figure out why he was that way.

“Hi,” Steve said tentatively. The ghost jerked up to look at him, eyebrows furrowed, and Steve didn’t know how he could understand what the ghost was saying, just that somehow, he did. 

_“You can see me?”_

“Yeah.” Steve nodded, and the ghost suddenly flashed white, like preparing for a fight.

 _“If you’re planning to do anything to my soul, I’m not letting you just take it. Necromancer.”_ The ghost narrowed his eyes.

Steve flinched hard at that, backing away.

“No! I’m not- I would never do that!! I don’t-” Then Steve fell abruptly silent, shoulders hunched in. “…Is that what I am? A necromancer?”

The ghost didn’t reply, floating over cautiously, until he was about an arm’s length away from Steve.

_“You didn’t know?”_

“No. I just thought I was some kind of…monster,” Steve replied honestly. “But I swear I would never hurt you. I don’t want to hurt anybody!”

_“What’s your name?"_

“I’m Steve. Steve Rogers. What’s your name?”

The ghost gestured towards the gravestone two rows behind his mother’s.

“Abraham Erskine?”

The ghost nodded.

“I’m sorry you died. Did you have any family?”

_“Not anymore.”_

“Friends?”

_“All gone too.”_

Steve frowned at that.

“How long have you been here like this?”

_“Since I was buried here.”_

“That’s- God, I’m so sorry. Can you not leave this place?”

_“I tried but…I don’t think so.”_

“Oh…That’s- That’s just awful. I’m really sorry.”

Erskine flashed him a soft, sad smile.

_“I’ve gotten used to it. But enough about me now. I want to know more about you. What’s somebody like yourself doing here anyway?”_

And Steve told him. 

\----------

It became sort of a routine, talking to Erskine every day.

Erskine told him about his past, how he became a doctor, about his family, though he never shared anything about his work – which was apparently strictly confidential, and Steve accepted that.

In return, Steve shared about his own life. He talked about his childhood, his mother, even the little things he did every day – feeding a stray cat, buying candy for a kid, finding a lost wallet, just because Erskine seemed to smile more whenever he told these stories, and Steve would do just about anything he could to make Erskine feel a little less lonely out here.

But nothing changed the fact that Erskine was still stuck there, trapped, unable to go anywhere, so one day, Steve asked him:

“You said before that I’m a necromancer. That means you must know what my powers can do right?”

Erskine gave him a hard look, all that trust carefully built over many weeks broken down in an instant.

_“Why do you want to know? What are you planning to do?”_

“Nothing bad, I promise!” Steve said quickly. “Just-” Then he sighed. “It’s sad.”

_“Sad?”_

“Yeah.” Steve nodded. “I mean…You’re stuck here. You’re already long dead but you’re still trapped here. You can’t even go to whatever afterlife awaits up there. So I just thought that if I’m really what you say - a necromancer with all these weird powers - then maybe I could do something and try to set you free.”

Erskine didn’t say anything for a long minute. Then,

 _“I can teach you,”_  he said carefully, eyes still trained on Steve. _“But…”_ And he paused. _“Can you promise me one thing?”_

“Yeah?”

_“Whatever happens, no matter what, promise me that you will never use your powers for harm, that you will remain a good man, not a necromancer, not a dark mage, just a good man.”_

Steve promised him.

\----------

The next few months were spent with Erskine, learning to contain and control that massive amount of power within him.

He learnt that necromancy wasn’t just death magic, or reviving people as the undead as it was traditionally known for. Necromancy at its core was actually the manipulation of soul energy, the very essence of life itself, and Steve could transfer it from person to person, healing and even calming them. A very useful skill to have, and Steve was beyond excited to practice using it, going around to different wards of a hospital during visiting hours to all the sick patients, cheering them up and alleviating their pain, if only for just a little bit. It was the first time Steve felt like he could do something more with his powers apart from hurt, and he too gradually started smiling a bit more, slowly returning back to his old, cheerful self that his mother had adored.

Of course, necromancy also involved communicating with spirits and souls – the one aspect of his powers Steve was already very familiar with - and when Steve questioned Erskine more about it, he told him,

_“Souls and spirits don’t just wander on the earth randomly. They need two things to stay in the physical world. The first is an anchor, an object, a place, a person, anything that ties them down here. The second is will. They have to have a reason to stay here somehow. It could be something holding them back, whether it is a quest for revenge, a last dying wish, anything. They may not even be aware of it themselves.”_

Steve knew Erskine’s anchor was the gravestone, but when he asked Erskine about his reason for being here, the man didn’t give him an answer, just smiled sadly up at him.

Steve never asked again.

\----------

He started visiting random graveyards after that, talking to any lost spirits there and trying to help them move on.

The day he first succeeded was both a sad and happy day.

\----------

Time passed, and eventually one day, Steve struck upon a sudden epiphany.

“I found a way to set you free!” He came exclaiming to Erskine, grinning. 

 _“Is that so?”_ Erskine said, with a soft, amused look on his face.

“You said spirits need an anchor right? And that they can’t control what they anchor to?”

Erskine inclined his head.

“But I can control that! I can transfer their anchors to something else, somewhere else, anything - I can take them where they want to be! I can get you free from this place, take you back home! You won’t be trapped here anymore!”

Steve was basically bouncing with excitement, smiling so hard his cheeks hurt.

He’d finally got it! He’d officially found a way to help all those poor lost souls and spirits tethered to the world, unable to move on. He could set them all free, help them get home. Erskine could finally be free.

So it was truly strange, because Erskine just smiled up at him again, sadness in his eyes.

Steve’s smile instantly faded. 

“What’s wrong?”

_“…I’m not trapped here anymore, Steve.”_

“What do you mean? Your anchor is still here and-” Then it hit him, and Steve fell silent. 

A long minute passed.

“…How long?” Steve finally asked, voice starting to tremble. “How long have you known?”

 _“A while,"_  Erskine admitted.

Another long silence.

“Then why..? Why haven’t you-” Steve couldn’t say it.

 _“It wasn’t the right moment. Not yet.”_ Erskine stepped even closer to him, hand on his shoulder. _“And I couldn’t possibly leave without saying goodbye to you first.”_

Tears immediately filled Steve’s eyes.

“I don’t understand- Why-”

 _“I’ve been stuck on this earth for a really long time, Steve. Gave me lots of time to think about things,”_ Erskine said softly. _“I never told you about what I used to do. I wasn’t just a doctor. I was a researcher, a researcher specialising in necromancy. I wanted to prove to the world that necromancy wasn’t all death and suffering, that there was good in it too, and I spent decades researching it, studying it. But then one day a necromancer approached me, asking for a copy of my notes. I knew he had nefarious plans in mind, so I refused, and he killed my family in front of me, threatening to murder everyone else in the city if I didn’t cooperate. And another. And another. As many as it would take.”_

Erskine took a deep breath.

_“…I regretted giving in to him more than anything else, and that regret followed me into death. For years I thought it was my punishment, being stuck here, as retribution for my sins. It was my research that caused so much pain and suffering after all.”_

Then Erskine smiled.

_“But then I met you. And you were bright, young, compassionate, selfless – so very selfless. You showed me that necromancy truly had the power to help others, to do so much good, much more than just mindless killings and destruction. Everything I spent my whole life working towards wasn’t wasted after all, and it’ll all continue to live on. In you.”_

Tears were freely running down Steve’s face by then, and he sniffed once, then forced his lips to curl into a smile, no matter how hard it physically pained him to do so.

“I guess you finally figured it out huh?”

This was supposed to be a happy occasion. Years of being trapped here and Erskine was at last free, he could finally move on and be at peace.

 _“Yes I did. But never forget that I’m so very proud of you. Always. Thank you for everything, Steve,”_ Erskine said. _“Truly.”_

\----------

The world continued turning, and Steve moved on.

He found a new purpose for his powers, going around to help all those lost souls and spirits stuck on earth find their peace.

Some were easy, just needing a listening ear to finally move on to the afterlife. Others were more complicated, requiring Steve to go about hunting for strange keepsakes or tracking down long lost family members before they finally moved on. But no matter what, Steve did his very best to help every single one of them, to make them know they weren’t alone, that it was okay to finally accept peace and leave this world, and it all ended up working out in the end, however long it took.

Until he met Clint Barton.

\----------

Steve first met Clint at an abandoned lot where a circus used to stand, many many years ago.

There had been rumours of it being haunted, which to Steve usually meant had a poor confused spirit stuck inside, so he came down to check it out one day, climbing over the fence and walking in. Almost immediately, he could sense the spirit hanging in the air, its magic resonating like a beacon.

“Hello?” He called.

There was no response, although the lights suddenly flickered on.

“I just want to talk,” Steve tried.

The lights did the flickering thing again, before switching off, the place going completely dark.

Steve waited. A heartbeat. And another. Then he awkwardly spoke again,

“Uhm…my name is Steve. Steve Rogers. Can we talk, please?”

Then every light in the vicinity suddenly turned back on, and a man outlined in white was grinning right in front of him, inches away from his face. 

_“Boo.”_

\----------

Steve got an asthma attack from that.

\----------

Clint turned out to be a pretty friendly ghost, albeit more of the prankster type, but he seemed receptive to Steve’s presence just fine, so Steve got straight down to figuring out how to help him to move on.

“So I just wanted to know if you have any regrets or last wishes, anything that might be keeping you here in this world?”

 _“Last wishes huh? Well…”_ Clint pondered over it for a minute while seated cross-legged, floating upside down. _“I guess I’ve always wanted to see a lion up close.”_

“A lion?”

_“Yeah, they’re pretty cool right? Haven’t seen one in real life before.”_

“Uhm…Okay?”

\----------

Steve carefully re-anchored Clint to a keychain and brought him out to the zoo, straight to the lion exhibit.

Clint tripped up the poor lion, making it topple into the pool with a startled grunt.

Clint couldn’t stop laughing about it for a whole week straight.

\----------

_“You know, I always wanted to keep a dog when I was young. Too bad I never got the chance.”_

And so Steve brought him to a dog park.

Clint destroyed the gate and let all the dogs out, screaming “GO MY FRIENDS! GET YOUR FREEDOM!!”

He couldn’t stop laughing about it for another week again. Steve, less so.

\----------

_“Okay, I know this sounds weird, but I’ve always had this dream of becoming a ballet dancer. Could never afford any lessons though.”_

So Steve went ahead and signed up for a ballet class.

It was one of most humiliating things he’d ever done in his life, and this was coming from a guy who’d accidentally walked into the female toilet twice before. _In a row._

Once again, Clint couldn’t stop laughing about it for a whole week. And Steve? Oh Steve was definitely not laughing at all. He was too busy contemplating how deep a hole he had to dig into the ground so that he could jump in and live there for the rest of his life.

\----------

But it wasn’t until _“Hey, you know, I’ve always wondered what crossdressing was like. Wearing a skirt just seems kinda liberating, don’t you think?”_ did Steve finally realise what was going on.

“You’re just messing with me, aren’t you!” He cried out, narrowing his eyes.

The shit eating grin on Clint’s face told Steve all he needed to know.

\----------

It turned out Clint never had any intention of ‘moving on’ after all, and when Steve asked him about it, he just said,

_"Look kid, I know you have good intentions and all, but I actually kinda like my life here."_

“Even though you can’t eat? Talk to anyone? Go anywhere?”

_"Okay, I have to admit, not eating is kind of a bummer. But walking through walls? Turning invisible? Screwing with people? It’s a pretty damn good life, you know?"_

“…Really?”

_“Really. I’m just happy to stick around wherever you wanna go, yeah?”_

And that was how Clint ended up becoming Steve’s first ghost companion, definitely not the first to come.

Turns out, there were many spirits in the world who were more than happy to spend their lives as incorporeal, ethereal forms, and Steve gradually started accumulating more ghost-keychains, all spirits that were content to simply follow him around on his many mortal adventures.

\----------

All that had a weird side effect though, and Steve earned a strange reputation in the spirit world, or ghost plane, or limbo, or whatever plane of existence the spirits existed in, and more and more spirits started to seek him out, even when he wasn’t actively looking for them.

Odd objects and notes with an address scribbled onto it would find their way to him somehow, all from spirits who needed his help or simply wanted to join his – and he was quoting Clint here – ragtag gang of phantoms.

Steve never turned away any of them, took them all in and helped them wherever he could.

Although-

His ghost-keychain collection was getting near ridiculous now, and it was kind of getting well, pretty _crowded_.

It was nice to see the spirits interacting with each other, finally not alone again, but they definitely deserved something more than him jumping from motel to motel, sometimes even sleeping out on the streets.

They needed something permanent, more…homely, somewhere far away from people so they wouldn’t scare the living crap out of them but also have their own little space to roam about safely.

And that was how Steve found himself taking up residence in an abandoned house deep within the forest about a year ago, getting on the radar of SHIELD and pretty much every other international spy organisation in the world.

\----------

Bucky’s brain was still working overtime to try and process all of this.

Steve was a necromancer. He was _the_ necromancer. Not a necromancer that had any world domination plans whatsoever, but a necromancer that went around befriending spirits and inviting them to stay in this mansion. This was the big international threat, a busybody punk who ran some sort of…spirit ghost sanctuary.

The fuck.

“So exactly how many spirits are there here now?” Bucky asked.

Steve thought about it, then cocked his head to the side.

“Err…I don’t know..?”

“What do you mean you don’t know?”

“I kinda…lost count?” Steve admitted sheepishly, flashing Bucky another one of his signature blinding, potentially demon-banishing smiles.

“Jesus.”

Seriously what the fuck was wrong with this guy? There definitely had to be a few screws loose in his head. He couldn’t possibly exist.

“You know, it’s a funny story, but this wasn’t actually a mansion to begin with. It was a cabin at first, a pretty rundown one too.”

“What happened?”

“Ghost powers? Uh…I honestly don’t know. One day it was all fixed, another day it got expanded, then it just became a mansion somehow. There’s running water, electricity, even a refrigerator that refills itself.”

“What.” 

Steve grinned again, then flopped down onto the side of the bed with his head perched on top of both palms, looking every bit like a golden retriever puppy, giving soulful innocent eyes at him.

Bucky stared hard at him, still not a hundred percent ready to trust every word he said. This all couldn’t be real.

Necromancers weren’t like this. Necromancers were people like Pierce, or Zola before him, or Schmidt even before that. There were sadistic, cruel, power-hungry. They weren’t kind or generous, and they definitely wouldn’t have stopped to help a SHIELD agent bleeding to death at their doorstep, much less go through all the trouble of sharing their very own soul energy just to heal him. 

“…You really don’t have any plans of raising undead armies or conquering the world?” 

Steve’s smile vanished in an instant and he went completely still.

“No, Bucky. I don’t. I would never do that. I don’t want to hurt anybody,” he said very seriously.

“Not even to revive a dead person?”

“Never,” Steve reassured with a firm shake of a head, then flashed him a soft, sad smile. “People die, and the dead are dead. Nothing can be done about that.” 

Bucky kept his gaze trained on Steve for a few more seconds, then he finally gave a quick short nod.

“Okay.”

\----------

Bucky spent the next few days confined to bed, resting, because even with the help of Steve’s magic, there was still much to fix, and he wanted to recover as soon as possible and get his ass back to SHIELD (who probably declared him dead and moved on without a second thought – they weren’t the sentimental type after all).

His days were simple.

In the mornings, Steve would come by bearing breakfast, usually with a cup of hot coffee and either toast or pancakes, always with a small bowl of Nutella on the side – ever since Steve found out Bucky loved chocolate.

Steve would leave the mansion right after, but never without making sure Bucky was comfortable and had everything he needed, including a few books and magazines in case he got bored.

He never told Bucky what he did outside the mansion, but it wasn’t as if Bucky needed to ask either, because sometimes Steve returned with a new spirit in tow, bringing them on a house tour throughout the mansion which often included stopping by Bucky’s room and saying hi.

At about one in the afternoon, Steve would bring lunch, and he would sit by Bucky’s bedside to eat, often smiling and talking animatedly about a whole range of topics.

After they were done, sometimes they continued talking, and other times Bucky would read and Steve would draw, both in complete silence, but never once feeling awkward or uncomfortable.

Then it was dinner, sleep, and the day repeated itself again.

It was a relatively dull routine, but a routine that Bucky slipped into far too easily.

It didn’t even matter that he was still stuck in bed most of the time doing absolutely nothing, which often made him - according to Nat - an angsty grumpy old man, every doctor’s worst nightmare, because it was near impossible to get mad (and stay mad) at Steve, a dumb, cheery, likeable little puppy that smiled and laughed way too much to be called physiologically normal.

It was kind of… _cute_ in a way, and cute was a term Bucky reserved exclusively for kittens, only ever kittens, never anything else, so that was already saying a lot.

Steve was just so different from everyone else Bucky had ever known, not just as a necromancer. He was shy, but he was also charming, with a certain charisma to him that made it too easy to get absorbed into whatever he was talking about - because Steve got excited over pretty much everything, always talking so animatedly like he was a cartoon character of some sort.

He was made up of fifty percent sincerity and fifty percent stubbornness, and put together, he could make even a rock found at the side of the road sound like the most incredible diamond in the world, make you _believe_ it too, which had a rather frustrating side-effect:

That telling Steve Rogers ‘no’ to anything was like asking the sun not to rise. Basically impossible.

Now add that to the fact that anger is banned within a fifty-foot radius of his annoying smiley self, and you end up with this inconceivable result:

Bucky - a SHIELD agent notorious for causing utter chaos at hospitals and infirmaries worldwide - dutifully following whatever Steve instructed him to do, being the most perfect patient possible that Nat would definitely drop a jaw at.

“Eat your vegetables, it’s good for you.”

Bucky ate his vegetables.

“Take some painkillers, it’s good for you.”

Bucky took the painkillers.

“You need to sleep more, it’s is good for you.”

Bucky slept more, the full recommended amount of eight hours.

But this?

“Drink this healing potion, it’s good for you.”

Would not fly. Would a hundred percent not fucking fly. Bucky didn’t care if Steve was armed with stupid doe eyes and a pout that could make the heavens crack open and start pouring down rainbows, he never drank that piece of crap back in SHIELD and he wasn’t about to start drinking it now.

Whatever Steve was brandishing in his hands wasn’t some innocent supposedly cherry-flavoured magic juice, it was gloopy sludge from the underworld, blended from fermented demon piss and a troll’s diarrhoea. 

“Bucky! Quit squirming around and just drink it! It’s good for you! And put down that butter knife!!”

“No, don’t you dare come anywhere near me with that blasted thing!”

“Come on, it’s cherry-flavoured and helps you heal faster. It’s good for- Bucky, stop waving that thing around, it’s dangerous!”

“Get it away, I don’t want it! I don’t care if it helps! What the fuck is even in that thing, why the hell did somebody invent that fucking piece of shi- MMPH!”  

\----------

Bucky got a cup of chocolate pudding and a pat on the head after that whole terrifying ordeal.

\----------

Then one afternoon, Steve came into the room all moody and quiet, picking at his food which had long gone cold. He didn’t even smile when Bucky attempted to make a joke, so something was definitely off.

“Hey, what’s wrong?”

Steve jerked up sharply and stared at Bucky, eyes wide and alert. Then he forced a smile, shaking his head.

“Nothing! I’m good!”

Bucky narrowed his eyes at him.

“No you’re not. Something’s bothering you. What is it?”

“Uhm…” Steve kept up the smile for a few more seconds before finally letting it crumble away. “It’s nothing. It’s kinda dumb.”

“It’s not nothing if it’s making you sad. What is it?”

Steve sighed, all of a sudden curling up like a tiny hedgehog and making himself as small as possible.

“It’s just this spirit I met. A young kid called Sharon. Her fa- somebody killed her, and she’d been wandering the earth ever since, looking for her little teddy bear toy.” Steve admitted. “She said it was a special bear, a bear that somebody gave to her at a park once, told her to hug it whenever she was feeling sad or lonely, and the bear would make her bad feelings go away.”

Steve disappeared deeper into his ball.

“So I said we could go looking for the bear together, and we did. We searched every place imaginable, but we couldn’t find it. I told her that we may not find it, we may never find it, ever, and she went really quiet. And then she asked me, ‘if I can’t find my bear, I can’t hug it, and if I can’t hug it, I can’t make all these bad feelings go away. So…can I hug _you_ instead?’. I said yes of course, and so I hugged her, told her ‘I’ll be your teddy bear any day, make all the bad feelings go away’, and then she smiled at me, and laughed, and- And she…”

Steve didn’t finish his sentence, looking so utterly crestfallen that it was making Bucky’s heart twist.

“…At least she’s happy now,” Bucky tried.

“Yeah, I know,” Steve murmured, then added more softly, “it just never gets any easier.”

And god did that snap Bucky’s blackened shrivelled heart right into two.

Steve always played the naïve, innocent card well, hiding behind a bright smile and wearing all his emotions on his sleeve, but Bucky knew that the man wasn’t naïve, and was far from innocent as well.

What Steve did everyday couldn’t be an easy task. Talking to spirits, becoming friends, giving a part of himself to them and helping them to move on, then having to be the one to constantly carry the burden of watching them fade away, always the one hurting right to the very end. And Steve went in knowing all that, but doing it anyway, simply because he believed it was the right thing to do.

So no, he wasn’t naïve or innocent, he was one of the strongest people Bucky knew (and this was including Nat in the equation), and sometimes even the strongest people still needed a little support along the way.   

“Maybe you need a special teddy bear too,” Bucky said. “Make all those bad feelings go away.”

Steve cracked a smile at that, laughing once.

“Don’t have one.”

And there went Bucky’s heart again, split right into half. Living alone in a house full of dead spirits, when was the last time Steve was in contact with someone living and breathing? 

Bucky raised both hands in the air, ignoring the surge of pain shooting down his left arm, still all bandaged up and swollen.

“Well, you got one right here. One-time offer only. Try it any other time and you’re gonna find a knife in your gut.”  

Steve laughed even harder, but trotted over in two short steps with his head down, tightly drawing Bucky into a hug and burrowing his face deep into Bucky’s shirt.

“...It’s not fair,” Steve muttered into the shirt, voice cracking near the end. “She didn’t deserve any of that. She didn’t- She was so young.”

Bucky felt his heart give a sharp twist, and he gently patted Steve’s back, not saying a word.

He stayed that way for perhaps hours until Steve finally withdrew, wiping at his eyes and flashing Bucky a small smile.

“Thanks, Buck.”

Bucky blinked once at the nickname, and then smirked.

“You’re welcome, _Stevie_.”

Steve made a totally-not-adorable ‘meep’ sound and turned completely red.

\----------

By the second week, Bucky was more than ready to leave the damn room, hobbling from place to place no matter how many times Steve berated him for doing so.

“Bucky you’re gonna hurt yourself!”

“I’ll be fine! Quit hovering!”

“Bucky! There’s a table in front of you, be careful!”

“Yes Steve. My eyes are working perfectly, thank you very much.”

“Bucky! Don’t climb the stairs, you’re gonna fall over!”

“I’m be fine, don’t worry.”

“Bucky-”

“Seriously Steve, I’m not a baby! Now quit worrying!!”

\----------

Soon enough, the third week rolled by, and Bucky was starting to walk around the whole mansion without any help (or Steve’s insufferable mother-hen mode).

He started to get this strange, heavy feeling deep within his gut, growing heavier as days went by.

Bucky was sure Steve was feeling it too, because his smiles have started to get more pained each time he talked to Bucky, and his eyes, more sorrowful.

Both of them knew exactly what was coming.

\----------

By the fourth week, Bucky was near completely healed, more than capable of leaving and going back to SHIELD, but for some reason, he just…couldn’t.

He kept up a limp even though his leg was completely stable by now, and he even continued to drink that awful healing potion every day even though he didn’t really need it anymore.

Until one day Steve didn’t bring in his daily portion of healing potion (usually given after lunch).

“I know you don’t need it anymore,” Steve said softly, and then handed him a small bag. “I cleaned your clothes, they’re inside. There’s also some food. Snacks if you get hungry. Few bottles of water.”  

Bucky couldn’t bring himself to say a word, throat all clogged up.

“You have somewhere to go right?” Steve asked.

“Steve, I…”

“You don’t- You have people waiting for you back home. Shouldn’t keep them waiting for too long.” Steve smiled up at him, so painfully forced it made Bucky’s heart shatter into pieces. 

Was this the exact smile Steve gave whenever he had to see a spirit disappear? When his mother left? When Erskine left? When all the hundreds of other spirits he’d helped inevitably left?

God-

Bucky drew Steve into a tight hug, pulling him close.

“Thank you for everything, Steve.”

“Thought you said the next time I tried hugging you I’ll find a knife in the gut,” Steve joked, voice trembling.

“You got it wrong, punk. It’s not _you_ hugging me this time.”

Steve laughed, burying his face deep into Bucky’s shoulder, and Bucky pointedly ignored how his shirt sleeve was growing damper by the second.

“Take care of yourself, Buck. Don’t go jumping into dangerous fights again.”

“Sure thing, Stevie. Take care of yourself too.”

Steve nodded against his shoulder, and that was that.


	3. This is Terrible Necromancy

Bucky went back to SHIELD, and they questioned him for a day or two about his sudden revival from the dead.

“Agent Barnes, you reported that you got mortally injured, by an eighteen-headed hydra, and you _survived?_ ” Fury himself asked, eyes narrowing – or _eye_ narrowing.

“That’s correct.”

“Who were you helped by?”

“Don’t know.” Bucky shrugged. “Didn’t get their name.”

Fury narrowed his eye further, throwing a report onto the table.  

“Head trauma, multiple fractures, stab wounds, lacerations, internal bleeding, likely multiple organ failures from taking three of Banner’s painkiller shots - yet a month later here you are back from the dead, still alive, walking and talking without a single scratch in sight.”

“Well I have scars to prov-”

“Don’t get all snarky on me,” Fury said. “We saw the amount of blood at the site. You couldn’t have survived that, not even with a team of top healers. So. What. Happened.”

“I don’t know what to tell you. And judging from that long list of injuries you just recited off, clearly I was out of commission.”

Fury glared at him.

“The blood trail led towards the necromancer’s mansion. And I don’t suppose you think that’s just a coincidence?” 

“I. Don’t. Know,” Bucky replied between gritted teeth and stormed out of the room.

\----------

“Bucky, tell me what happened.” Nat ambushed him at his home one afternoon, and Bucky sighed.

“I don’t remember giving you a key.”

“You know I don’t need one. And don’t change the subject. Tell me what happened.”

“It’s like I told you a hundred times already.” Bucky looked her dead in the eye. _“I don’t know.”_

\----------

SHIELD kept him under close watch.  

The prevailing theory was that Bucky was an undercover spy agent sent in by the necromancer, part of some nefarious evil plan, and whatever Bucky did couldn’t convince them otherwise. He was benched for the foreseeable future, stuck at home being bored out of his mind - unless of course, Bucky confessed to them about Steve, but he wasn’t about to do that either.

Steve may be a necromancer, but he wasn’t hurting anyone. He wasn’t planning on world domination or declaring any wars. He saved Bucky’s life and all he ever wanted to do was to help every spirit left wandering alone in the world find peace and have a home. Steve was just unbelievably kind with a heart of pure gold, shining bright like a lantern in the dark, and Bucky was the dumb moth forever chasing after its light.

How could Bucky even think of betraying him? He’d rather give up his entire life with SHIELD than to let Steve – young sweet Steve - get arrested and locked up for life. 

Then somebody knocked on his apartment door again, the fourth time in a day, and Bucky felt like tearing all his hair out, stomping over to the front door and pulling it open.

“Nat, I fucking told you, I don’t know a damn-” And Bucky froze, because whoever was standing in front of him wasn’t Nat. It wasn’t even Hill, or Fury.

It was-

“Hi Buck,” Steve said shyly, big blue crystal eyes blinking at him. His face was still exactly the same as Bucky remembered, tufts of blond hair sticking out in exactly the same places and nestled in the same identical swirls. But-

“What the fuck happened to you?!”

Steve wasn’t skinny no more. In fact, he was nearly as tall as Bucky, fucking _huge_ too, built like a goddamn tank or something.

“Uhm…It’s kinda complicated but-”

“How the hell did you even find me anyway?!”

“I didn’t find you,” Steve hurriedly said. “It wasn’t me. It was Lucky. Remember Lucky? He followed your scent.”

Lucky the spirit Labrador, how could anyone forget?

Then Steve suddenly looked around, frowning.

“Err…Lucky? Where did you go? LUCKY!”

There was a loud crash from somewhere in Bucky’s kitchen, and both of them jerked back towards it.

“Uhm Bucky? You wouldn’t happen to have any pizza lying around, would you?”

Bucky raised an eyebrow. He did have some leftover pizza in the fridge, but why was Steve suddenly asking him that?

There was another crash.

Steve groaned, running past him and darting towards the kitchen, where the fridge door was completely blasted open, its contents spilling out onto the floor – including his box of leftover pizza.

“LUCKY NO!!” Steve dove for the box, tightly clutching it to his chest. “For the billionth time, dogs can’t eat pizza! You even _died_ from eating too much pizza, why the hell are you still so obsessed over it?!” Steve scolded thin air, but Bucky could almost imagine the way Lucky whined and whimpered.

“I’m not mad,” Steve said, expression softening. “Just don’t do it again, okay?” There was no visible response, but whatever the invisible spirit dog did seemed to satisfy Steve, and he got back on his feet, sheepishly passing over the box back to Bucky.

“Sorry about that. Lucky-”

“-loves pizza. Yeah, I kinda got that.”

“Sorry.”

“It’s alright,” Bucky reassured, then crossed both arms. “But back to the subject. Care to tell me what the fuck happened to you?”

Steve froze again, eyes comically wide - Bucky would be lying if he said he didn’t miss this stupid expression of his, like a child caught stealing cookies from the cookie jar.

“Uhm,” Steve started. “I…” Then he turned completely red and looked away, twiddling his thumbs like a five-year-old.

“Yes?”

“I kinda…really wanted to see you,” Steve blurted out.

 “Uhm.” Bucky blinked. “That doesn’t really explain why you’re…” He gestured to Steve. “…all _this_.”

“I know,” Steve mumbled. “Just. The spirits got uh…mad at me?”

“Mad?”

“Yeah. They thought-” Steve suddenly jerked to the side and flushed red again. “No _Clint!_ I’m not telling him that!!”

Then he continued.

“ _Anyway_. The spirits got really really mad at me for letting you leave. Apparently they thought I should have went after you or something…” Steve mumbled, refusing to meet Bucky’s eyes. “I told them I didn’t want to leave, because the mansion was there, their home was there, and they uhm…weren’t very happy to hear that. They said I should live my life among the living, not with the dead.”

Steve continued twiddling his thumbs.

“So uh…We came to a compromise in the end. I would come to find you but I would take them all along as well. That way we both win, right?”

“…And when you say you take them with you, you mean-”

“I kinda anchored all of them to me..? Like uhm…possessing me?”

“WHAT?!”

“I didn’t force them to, I swear, I asked all of t-”

“That’s not what I’m worried about at all, fucking hell! _Steve!_ ”

“It just seemed like the most…efficient idea at the time?”

“What the fuck Steve! You just let hundreds- maybe even _thousands_ of spirits possess you all at once! How the fuck is your mind not splintered into pieces now?!”

“I don’t know!”

Then his front door was suddenly crashed open, and a bunch of SHIELD agents were swarming in, pointing their guns at Steve.

“Freeze! Don’t move a step closer to Agent Barnes.”

“Err…” Steve said, and all of a sudden, every single gun was wrenched out from the agents’ hands by an invisible force, clattering uselessly to the floor.

Bucky gaped at Steve.

“Uhm…That wasn’t me. I swear.”

\----------

SHIELD tried everything, but quickly found that any attempt to hurt or restrain Steve would immediately go awry - cuffs, bullets, tranq darts, even trackers shattering into pieces before they could come into contact with him. They couldn’t even lock Steve in a cell, because the spirits would just break the lock of whatever was holding him. Physical locks, electric locks, even magic locks, nothing worked.

But despite of all that hostility from SHIELD, Steve still retained his friendly cheerful demeanour. He was fully cooperative with SHIELD, always apologising for the damage caused and obediently staying in his room when told, sometimes spending many hours a day getting interrogated by multiple SHIELD agents (which Bucky knew from experience was absolutely exhausting).

Even Nat grilled Steve for hours once, and the only thing she said later to Bucky was:

“I can see why you like him.”

Bucky didn’t deign to reply her.

\----------

Even after weeks of Steve proving himself as harmless as a tiny kitten and being fully cooperative, SHIELD still refused to release him – much to Bucky’s utter enragement. They even restricted the amount of time he could spend with Bucky, a maximum of an hour a day, and always under very close supervision.

They were treating Steve like a complete dirtbag here even though he had done absolutely nothing wrong, and although Steve still remained friendly and cheerful towards everyone despite how they treated him, Bucky could see the weeks of imprisonment slowly starting to wear down on Steve, turning his usually sunny smiles just a tad bit gloomier than usual, no matter how much he tried to hide it.

Then one day Fury summoned both of them into his office, snapping something about ‘a ghost wandering in the engineering labs’ and demanding an explanation from both Steve and Bucky (as if Bucky somehow had some fault in this too).

“Uhm…” Steve said with the usual wide-eyed innocent expression. “I didn’t do anything. It was all Jarvis.”

Fury gave him the most unimpressed look, and Steve gave a small sheepish grin, before explaining.  

As it turned out, Jarvis used to be a butler in his past, serving the Starks, so when he found out the resident head engineer of SHIELD was none other than Tony Stark himself, a very late descendent of a Stark he used to serve, he’d immediately taken a shine to the genius billionaire, hanging around in his lab and - of all things - cleaning and tidying every square inch of the place.

Stark himself had been less than pleased at the sudden haunting of a cleaning butler ghost, claiming the chaos in his lab was a ‘calculated mess that sparked creativity’, and he’d immediately gone about trying to invent something to exorcise said ghost, which had the unfortunate side effect of creating an even bigger mess in his lab that Jarvis was only too happy to clean.   

Fury listened to it all, growing more unimpressed by the second, then he finally snapped,

“And you didn’t think to stop him?”

Steve blinked, frowning once – so very uncharacteristic of him.

“What? No. I mean, he wasn’t hurting anyone. And it’s been _weeks_. Jarvis was just getting restless so-”

“I don’t care. I want that ghost gone by the end of today. I don’t care how, I just need. It. _Gone_.”

Steve’s frown deepened, and it looked as if somebody just murdered all the rainbows in the world.

“But he wasn’t harming anyo-”

“ _I don’t care_ , Rogers. It needs to go or god help me I will find a fucking way to shoot you and that bloody spirit of yours in the head.”

And then Fury dismissed them both.  

\----------

Just a day later, SHIELD headquarters was inexplicably attacked by a group of goblins, digging underground tunnels and trying to collapse the whole building from below.

If it wasn’t for Jarvis sending a Morse code message to Stark by flickering the lights in the lab, who knew how much damage those goblins could have caused.

\----------

The very next day against all safety protocol, Stark barged right into Steve’s unofficial prison room to ask him to anchor Jarvis’s soul to a newly made electronic contraption hanging from the ceiling, fitted with a special algorithm that converted Jarvis’s Morse code messages into an actual artificial robotic voice.

Steve did, and Fury had nothing to say about that.

\----------

Weeks later, they were summoned again with another complaint from Fury, this time about strange noises coming from the shooting range, and mysterious missing arrows that were found hanging from vents all around headquarters.

Steve just rolled his eyes when he heard that, yelling out,

“CLINT!!”

There was no response, then an arrow came shooting in from nowhere, exploding into a cloud of confetti mid-air, covering every inch of Fury’s office in glitter and rainbow paper.

Fury was less than amused.

\----------

A week later after a glowing recommendation by Nat with regards to Clint’s incredible sharp-shooting skills, Steve was asked to anchor him to a custom-made SHIELD bow (equipped with a special Stark-made digital screen that Clint could send messages and communicate with).

He and Nat took down a rampaging cyclops in Greece together days later.

Fury had nothing to say about that either.

\----------

Steve was released from SHIELD after that, moving into Bucky’s spare room upstairs a few days later, under strict orders not to go anywhere unsupervised.

Bucky also started getting sent out on missions again, and each time he left the house, Steve was there to send him off, always with a huge smile on his face, but with big fragile blue eyes that looked ready to crumble into pieces. And whenever he came back, no matter what time it was, Steve would also be there waiting, sometimes huddled in layers of thick fluffy blankets (courtesy of Nat) into a huge furry burrito, rubbing his eyes sleepily (and adorably), mumbling a greeting to Bucky before promptly shuffling back upstairs to his room and falling asleep.

It was such a small and silly thing, but Bucky’s heart always ballooned with such warmth every single time he saw Steve standing there at the door. Every single damn time.

Even Nat knew about it, and she commented to him once,

“It’s like you guys are a married couple.”

Bucky told her to shut up and mind her own fucking business.

\----------

Steve started going back out to do his spirit business as per usual, helping spirits to move on into the afterlife and finding homes for those that didn’t (always accompanied by Bucky, Nat or some other SHIELD agent if both of them weren’t available).

It was hard work, and some days he would come back home to immediately plop down onto the couch, burying his face into this giant teddy bear toy (that Bucky had shipped in from Japan after he saw Steve ogling at it for days on his tablet), non-moving and curled into a tight ball for pretty much the rest of the day. Sometimes he would talk about it, sometimes he wouldn’t, but Bucky would always buy him a giant chocolate milkshake from his favourite diner nearby and set it down on the table.

\----------

One day, reports came in from SHIELD of an unknown disturbance in an abandoned theater in France.

A SHIELD team was assembled and sent in, but days went by and the issue remained unresolved, so SHIELD finally sent in Nat and Bucky to investigate.

The both of them took one step into the theater - a dark, desolate, eerily quiet place, definitely ripped straight out from a horror movie – before stepping right back out.

They looked at each other.

“Let’s call Steve,” Bucky said.

“Yupp.”

\----------

Steve walked straight into the creepy theater without even bringing a flashlight, was there for a couple minutes before coming back out, grinning brightly.

“Bucky! I made a new friend!!”

And that was how Steve became SHIELD’s unofficial ghost specialist, called in whenever spirits were suspected to be involved.

\----------

Nearly three months into staying at Bucky’s apartment, Steve asked Bucky tentatively if he could re-anchor all the spirits from his body to his home, mumbling something about how the spirits really liked this place.

“Is that your way of asking if you can move in permanently?” Bucky smirked, and Steve flushed a deep red, muttering something inaudible under his breath.

Bucky snorted at that and agreed, and Steve literally lit up like the god damn sun, all ecstatic again.

Since then, Bucky’s house started mysteriously expanding in size, growing as big as Steve’s mansion from before, with tons of empty space all over. His home was also always sparkling clean, fridge somehow always full of his and Steve’s favourite foods even though they never went grocery shopping, but that wasn’t even the weirdest thing to happen yet. 

The weirdest thing was definitely that Steve didn’t revert back to his normal compact little self, remaining big, asthma-free and in peak physical condition. When Bucky asked him about it, Steve looked just as bewildered.

“I don’t know..?”

Then Bucky asked the spirits later in the day, when Steve was throwing out the trash.

“Did you guys do that? Make Steve healthy?”

The lights flickered, spelling out Y-E-S in Morse code, and Bucky’s expression softened.

“Thanks for taking care of him.”

\----------

Time passed, and Steve continued to stay, spirits and all.

Bucky kept waiting for the other shoe to drop, for things to go horribly wrong, but nothing ever did.

He was actually… _happy_ for once – disgustingly happy according to Nat, but who cared about what Nat thought anyway.

Then one day, Bucky returned home to the smell of pure heaven. _Chocolate cake._

His mouth immediately started watering, and Steve shot him a radiant smile when Bucky came peering in over his shoulder, staring wide-eyed at the oven where a giant pan of chocolate cake was sitting, perfectly risen with molten gooey chocolate over the top.

“About ten more minutes,” Steve said.

Bucky made a noise.

“Just ten more minutes, Buck,” Steve repeated, amused. “Why don’t you go shower first?”

Bucky made the noise again but trotted upstairs to take a nice long warm shower as instructed.

When he came back downstairs, the cake was already plated nicely on the table, slathered with a nice layer of chocolate ganache all over.

Bucky instantly looked around for a knife, and the knife immediately came floating over from a drawer in the kitchen, handle waiting patiently mid-air for Bucky to take hold of.

“Thanks, err…”

“It was Phil,” Steve supplied helpfully with his head perched over Bucky’s shoulder.

“Thanks Phil.”

Bucky didn’t waste another second. He cut a generous slice of that perfect chocolatey goodness and basically inhaled it straight from his hand, reaching for the knife again.

Steve giggled.

“Oh god, Buck. There’s chocolate all over your mouth. And your fingers.”

Bucky licked all that delicious heaven off with a satisfied purr and turned to look at Steve, about to say something about how it should be illegal for any cake to contain that much chocolate when he realised Steve was staring wide-eyed at him – like the child caught stealing cookies again – cheeks tinged with the faintest bit of red.  

“Uhm,” Steve said very eloquently, blinking rapidly.  “You uh- The chocolate – I just- eep!”

Steve suddenly lost his balance and stumbled forth right into Bucky, with his face crashing in and oh-

_Oh._

Steve immediately gave a strangled squawk, scrambling back as far as he could, face now fully flushed in deep red. He jerked to the back, hissing loudly,

“Oh my _god!_ Which one of you did that!! Why did you-”

There was a short silence as whatever ghost (ghosts?) in the room replied Steve, and Steve suddenly twisted back, looking at Bucky and going even redder.

“What- _No!_ ”

Another pause.

“For the last time, no! Get out! Stay out of this room and don’t ever- No I don’t care if you can walk through walls!! Go away!!” 

Bucky didn’t think it was possible for Steve to turn even redder, but he somehow managed it anyway, and it was the most stupidly adorable thing Bucky had ever seen in his life.

Bucky felt his lips curl into a small smile as he watched Steve all flustered, shifting his weight from side to side, twiddling his thumbs while his eyes flickered everywhere, to basically everything in the vicinity except Bucky’s face.

“I’m so sorry Buck, that was- It was just- Oh god, I’m so sorry.”

“You’re such an idiot,” Bucky laughed, reaching out to grab hold of Steve’s wrist and tugging him in.

Steve made a high-pitched ‘meep’ noise but followed, tumbling into Bucky’s chest, a hand awkwardly propped against his bicep. Then Steve finally looked up, cheeks painted dark red, eyes a shade of bright crystal-clear blue that every sky and ocean should be painted in.

Bucky leaned in slowly and Steve didn’t back away, eyes falling shut.

\----------

When they finally met in the middle, glitter confetti literally exploded out of thin air, showering them in pure gold.

**Author's Note:**

> Well anyway, I once again never intended for this fic to go beyond 5k+ words but what can I say? I had a plot bunny and ran with it. :P
> 
> Thank you so much for reading and I hope you enjoyed it!! :) It really means a lot!


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